I'll Be Dead Before the Day is Done
by Thalius
Summary: Shiro shoves his back against the cold metal beside Matt and his father, closing his eyes and hoping beyond hope that this isn't the only change this week. That they won't pick him this time.


Today has a lot of names.

"The mingle," Matt calls it, with a huff of sharp, empty humour.

"An experiment," Sam theorizes, always assessing the intent and movement of the Galra.

"A break," some of the other prisoners call it. A break from the dark of their small cells.

" _Fear,"_ most of the rest know it as. He is one of them.

The sentries grab at their wrists, twisting them hard behind their backs and walking them out of their cells. The pain is so routine he's numb to it now, and feels his body naturally shift to accommodate for the discomfort. He watches some of the newer prisoners grapple with the guards as they are forced out of their cells, crying out in pain and fidgeting in discomfort, confused and afraid.

They'll get used to it. They have no other option but to adapt.

They're on the move now, away from the prison blocks. Second hallway, turn right. Up the elevator—four blips of sound. Left at the corner, then fifty-seven steps to the outpost. Two sentries scan him, Sam and Matt, then usher them into the door leading to the Pit. Another Matt-ism.

The Pit is nothing more than a much larger, much brighter cell—a prison yard inside a ship that has neither wind nor sun. He squints before they push through the door, preparing for the nuisance of light. Unlike the pain in his left wrist, he can't ever get used to the sickly yellow light of the yard.

Other prisoners are shoved through the doors, and most cover their faces or huddle near one another. They quickly take to the corners of the yard once they get over the transition, pressing close together for warmth and contact. The three of them walk to their spot, beside Kimph and Taeko, and wait.

"We've got eight minutes to socialise," Matt whispers next to him, as he always does, crossing his arms and rubbing at his biceps. It's always five degrees colder than was comfortable, but it's marginally warming standing under the glare of bright, pus-coloured bulbs illuminating the room and jostling around with the prisoners.

"Seven, now," Shiro corrects. Matt looks at him. "The sentries arrived late last time."

Sam shrugs at that. "Maybe they're getting bored of this," he interjects. "Maybe they're changing up the schedule."

"Well whatever it is, we have seven minutes," Shiro repeats, the words routine and automatic. "Ask around. See what else is different."

There's no sense in talking with new prisoners; they can't communicate with them anyway, and most of them are too afraid of what's happening to remember patterns in sentry movement. There's also little sense in talking to old ones—they don't talk. At all. Most don't move around a lot, either. He wonders what the Galra have done to them. Wonders if they'd altered their minds in some way, preventing them from relaying past horrors to the newcomers. Or maybe they've just simply been broken so many times they can't find enough of themselves to piece back together. He doesn't know which one frightens him more, so he shoves it from his mind.

Kimph and Taeko, though, they talk to them; they were brought in around the same time Matt and Sam and Shiro were. They don't have conversations with one another beyond numbers; seconds and steps and pairs of guards, partly because the common prisoner dialect is limited to figures and objects, and partly because there's nothing else worth discussing. They talk of movement, time, patterns—immediate concerns. Any breaks or changes in any of those things means news. What they do with this news is not much, but it's a way to pass the time, a way to keep busy when they're in their cells, and a way to feel a bit more prepared.

Kimph has nothing to report. She grunts and waves him off, then kneels on the cold floor and begins to tap at the skin of her head in a rhythmic motion around herself. _Calm,_ she explains the ritual to him with waves of her fingers. _Relaxing._

Taeko says there was a missing set of Sentries on patrol four shifts ago in his block, but that it returned to normal after that.

"Must have been taking away a dead prisoner," Matt whispers to him, an answer he already knows. "Or maybe sick. Don't see anyone missing, though—maybe it was a new guy."

He nods to Taeko in thanks and reports their own findings. Initially the sentry patterns had seemed rigid, unchanging and consistent. But he quickly learned that when given unlimited amounts of free time in a dark cell with nothing to do but _listen_ , innumerable lapses in the schedules immerge.

"What the hell?"

Shiro looks away from Taeko and follows the line of Sam's pointing finger. His eyes settle on one of the doors, where guards are filing in.

"Four minutes early," Sam reports. " _Way_ too early."

The reaction in the cell is immediate; any chatter dies out at once, and everyone presses flush to the walls. Shiro shoves his back against the cold metal beside Matt and his father, closing his eyes and hoping beyond hope that this isn't the only change this week.

That they won't pick him this time.

The Sentries stop when they make it to the middle of the cell. He counts their steps, not needing to see them to know where they are and how many. Four stand in the centre; two pairs side by side, then one each standing three metres away, forming an open trapezoid where they will collect the fighters from the crowd before moving onto the work camp selection. The many other guards in the room walk perimeters near the walls, uncomfortably close to the prisoners but not touching them.

Then they speak in their cold and blunt voices. It's in the common prisoner language, the only one any of them can hope to understand.

"One-one-seven dash nine-eight-seven-five," the Sentries call out. "Step forward."

He opens his eyes. He feels the flutter of something that mimics disappointment in his chest at their words—they may be early, but they haven't changed the exercise.

He steps forward six steps, counting them out. It brings him far enough away from the wall to feel eyes on his back, but he is still cast in shadow in the corner.

"One-one-seven dash nine-eight-seven-five, to the centre of the cell."

Sixty-two more steps, and he's facing one of the sentries in the middle of the Pit. They scan him, a bright red line that stings his eyes even behind closed lids, and then turn and call out five other prisoner IDs. He knows two of them; not their names, but the numbers are familiar to him.

And then they call out Matt's number.

He turns in shock to look back at his friend, but a Sentry presses a sharp staff into his spine and blares a warning at him. He grunts and turns again, trying to get his heart to slow down.

They _are_ changing the routine. Some of the other prisoners from last week hadn't died in the arena yet, and they _always_ pick the same people to fight until they did. It's a certainty he's come to rely on, one that has never failed him before now, because _he_ is always chosen. Every week for the past months or days or years or however long they've been here.

The rest of the fighters are called and walk to the centre, either by their own volition or by the force of the guards. Matt's directed in front of him by a Sentry, and he manages to shoot Shiro a look of horror before being shoved and turned around.

The guards snap-to when the fighters for the week have been corralled, then order them to walk. He can already hear the whimpers around him, sounds of fear from both the fighters and their friends that needs no translation. It permeates the air like a fog, along with the smell of sweat and fear and submission.

Shiro feels eyes on him from all over, a familiar sensation, and wants to turn back and make sure Sam _knows_ he'll take care of his son. He won't let Matt die, not like this.

Instead, he makes a low sound in his throat to get Matt's attention, and he sees him turn his head just enough to let him know he's listening. "They let you group up to fight," he whispers. The Sentries take no notice of the chatter, and he raises his voice so that the others can hear him. "Just stick together. We can pull through." _And hope to god they don't pit us against each other this week._ They didn't always; that was a decision of the crowd. He wants to pray for this small mercy, but struggles to think of any god that would listen.

"Someone dies every week," Matt says without looking at him, voice high with panic. "Someone _always_ dies. And even if I don't, I'll just be in the ring again next week."

"They're switching things up," he replies. "Maybe it'll be different."

They arrive at the gate of the arena soon enough. Shiro hears the crowds through the metal gates that lead into the ring, listens to the cheers and the taunts and the cries—another sensation he's numb to.

The others, though, he can hear them whispering and sees them looking around frantically; for a weapon or an escape, he can't tell. Matt finally turns and looks at him, and he gives his friend the most genuine smile he can manage.

"We can do this—"

A roar, deafening and deep and rumbling the ground beneath their feet and rattling up through his bones echoes in the arena and silences any words of encouragement. The chanting of the crowd quickly becomes singular and organised, and he easily hears their cry through the barrier.

" _Myzax!"_ they cry, again and again. " _Myzax!"_

"What is that?" Matt asks, looking back through the gate. Shiro peeks over his shoulder to get a better look, and realises that they are all going to die.

A beast, massive and malformed and seething with a deep, alien rage howls at the crowd, wielding a staff larger than a human body that houses a purple orb on its head; the sphere crackles and flies around the arena with deadly grace when the beast twirls the staff.

"One-one-six dash nine-four-seven-two," the Sentry calls out, forcing them to look away from the thing in the arena. "You are first."

"No," Matt whispers, and looks back at Shiro. "No, no, you said we went _together—"_

"They usually send us out all at once—"

"I'm not gonna make it." Matt's shaking now, and grabbing at his hair. "I'm never going to see my family again. I can't—"

"You can do this," Shiro says, but he knows the words are a lie and that they couldn't _possibly_ do this, not any of them—

"One-one-six dash nine-four-seven-two, you are first," the Sentry calls out again, and the gate to the arena falls to the floor. It raises its sword, intending to push Matt towards the entrance, and he feels his body respond to the threat before his brain does. Shiro couldn't promise Sam to his face that he'd protect Matt, but he could do the next best thing.

He shoves Matt aside and makes a beeline for the Sentry. After so many fights in the arena, the movements are routine now. A sharp jab under the breastplate with his left hand, and he yanks the sword from the guard's grasp with his right.

"This is _my_ fight!" he snarls at the other prisoners, and then swings the blade at Matt before he loses his nerve.

He aims for the knee; an injury that would heal, but would force him out of the fight. The Galra may want to watch prisoners die, but they wanted to watch them be broken in the arena; sickly and injured gladiators were not amusing.

Matt cries out and falls to the ground, grabbing at the wound that's already spilling crimson onto the floor in a steady flow. His face is a twist of fear and confusion and betrayal and it takes everything he has not to drop the act and help Matt up off the ground.

Shiro tosses the weapon away from him, making sure it makes it past the gate and lands into the arena; he'll sure as hell need it.

"I want blood!" He falls down onto Matt and shoves him into the floor, and relishes the last few moments he has with his friend, who's staring up at him with wide and terrified eyes. _He's afraid of you. Everyone is_. "Take care of your father," he whispers, and feels hands pull him away and toss him into the ring before Matt can say anything, and then the door closes and Matt and the other prisoners are gone, and he is alone.

He looks up at his opponent, standing in the centre of the arena and swinging its weapon around its head like a toy, impossibly large. Then he makes a grab for the sword he tossed into the ring, stands up, and prepares to die.


End file.
